


Jachenau's Curse

by PoetHrotsvitha



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Attempted non-con (not Reylo), Dark Fairy Tale Elements, F/M, Violence, minor gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-27 02:58:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15015176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoetHrotsvitha/pseuds/PoetHrotsvitha
Summary: There is a forest beyond the edge of the village, where the old gods live. It's a foolish decision to go there for hunting. But Rey is desperately hungry, and most options look more appealing when the alternative is starvation.





	Jachenau's Curse

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to dig out of a writing slump with some prompts on tumblr, and this one got out of hand. Thought I'd share it here as well. The prompt was "Fairy Tale Inspired Horror", which is obviously _exactly_ the sort of thing I adore.

 

_There’s a path out Wicker’s Way where young maids go and don’t come back_

_Keep your daughters safe at home for deep inside the forest black_

_There’s a shadow moves too fast to catch by bolt or blade or bow_

_The sharpened teeth of Kylo Ren will be the last of what she knows!_

 

-        _Old skipping rhyme, often heard in Jachenau town centre_

 

* * *

 

“Are you sure that’s going to be enough?”

Ben sounds doubtful, but Rey binds the hare’s feet tightly, making it easier to sling it over her shoulder on the way home. “Nothing is ever enough for Plutt, but this isn’t for him. It’s for me. I’ll eat it before I reach the inn.”

Ben grunts. He’s squatting on the ground next to her, giant body nearly folded over in half. “You could set up a fire here. I’d keep watch.”

Awkwardly getting back up to her feet without getting tangled in her dress, Rey pats herself down. Knife strapped against her side, check. Smaller knife in her boot, check. Water flask at hip. Quiver over her shoulder.  “I’d rather not stay for longer than I have to. Still don’t trust this place.”

“What, afraid that the big bad Kylo Ren is going to get you?”

“Shut it.” His tone makes it clear that he’s making fun of her, but the truth is that she  _is_  a little bit afraid. It’s difficult to be warned away from a place since childhood and then be comfortable in it. The first time she’d stumbled across Ben, she’d sharply drawn her bow on him, driven by instinct and terror. He’d thankfully managed to introduce himself before she lodged an arrow in his throat. (“I live here,” he’d said, scowling at her. “Who’re  _you_?”)

She shouldn’t be anywhere near this place. But times are so lean that everyone is getting desperate. There are no more scraps for an orphan like Rey, and the easy game around the village has long been hunted into nothingness. Starvation makes it easy to overcome a lot of fears. The emptiness of Wicker Forest means that there are a lot of slow animals to hunt, and that’s hard to argue with.

Ben’s grin has faded and he’s staring up at her solemnly. “I promise that in all the years I’ve hunted here, I’ve never had any trouble. You won’t either, not with me here. You could stay a little longer.”

Fiddling with the edge of her belt, Rey suddenly finds that she can’t meet his eyes. The truth is that she’d like to stay, but… She doesn’t want to get  _too_  friendly. Rey doesn’t make friends. Not even with gruff and unexpectedly gentle hunters who have broad shoulders and crooked smiles. Not even when they stare at her with an intensity that makes her heart jump. Not even when they probably have a warm and dry cabin to go back to somewhere— he seems the type to build that with his bare hands, she thinks— and she’s about to return to a leaking shed that is propped up behind Jachenau’s only inn.

Taking a deep breath, she gives him her brightest smile. “No, I still should get back. I’ve got to be home before Plutt wakes up or he’ll tan my hide.”  

The air around them seems to get colder— or is that her imagination? “No one should be allowed to do that to you.”

It’s the strangest feeling, having someone be angry on her behalf. Rey isn’t sure that it’s ever happened before. “Did you, um… Did you want some of this rabbit? I never even asked, sorry—”

“No,” Ben says, standing and sliding his own wickedly large and sharp hunting blade into the sheath against his thigh. She once saw him take down an entire roebuck with it, after which he insisted on butchering it on the spot and giving her all the best cuts to take home. “You keep it. I’m not hungry for rabbit.”

 

* * *

 

Small animals go missing first. Chickens vanish from their hen houses overnight without anyone hearing a sound. This would have been upsetting enough before a time when the village was on the edge of starvation, but now it causes a ripple of panic whenever a farmwife goes out in the morning and finds another roost empty. The news spreads from house to house like an ill wind, making everyone a little more restless.

Next come the goats. And then the pigs. By the time a horse disappears, the town is abuzz with panic. Weapons are kept close to hand and every door is bolted and barred at night.

Two weeks after the disappearances began, Plutt calls a meeting in the main room of his inn. It’s the only space in the small village that could even hope to hold them all, and even then, it’s a tight squeeze as every member of the community shows up. No one wants to risk looking like they’re hiding anything, and everyone wants a chance to eye up their neighbours. Rey stands nearly crushed in the corner, trying to observe while unseen.

“Right,” Plutt starts, waving his meaty arms around. He has to stand on a table to be able to see over everyone’s heads. “We’re here and we’re not going to leave until we know which one of us is stealing the animals—”

One of the oldest women in the village jabs her walking stick into the air. “Nonsense! We all know this is the doing of Kylo Ren.”

A momentary hush falls over the room. “Oh shut up, you crone—” Plutt starts, but he’s interrupted by several of the older villagers making noises of agreement. The fear rises in the room as everyone begins trying to talk at once, fearful and harried.

The old woman shouts over them all. “I’ve lived longer than any of you, and my mother told me, and her mother told her— the old gods live in that forest, and they’ll wreak revenge when they’re displeased. Has anyone been hunting there? That space is sacred and Kylo Ren is angered when someone takes what is his.”

Rey suddenly wishes she was anywhere else.

“We’ll die before he stops,” the Grandmother says emphatically, “if we do nothing.”

A few of the children start to cry. Someone cries out, “What do we do? What can we do against a god—”

The old woman shrugs. “We send a sacrifice.”

 _A girl._  Everyone knows the legends, the stories, the silly children’s rhyme that no longer seems so silly. Young women sent off into the forest to die so that the old gods would be appeased.

_The sharpened teeth of Kylo Ren will be the last of what she knows._

There’s a subtle shifting as parents in the room protectively grip their daughters, young men moving to hold their sweethearts and reassure them. It’s clear that there’s going to be a fight if one of them is selected.

But Rey has no father and no sweetheart.

It’s Plutt who looks at her first. The rest of the room eventually notices his gaze and follows, staring at the corner where Rey is desperately trying to shrink into the wall.

It’s one of the young men, faceless in the back of the crowd, who shouts first. “She’ll do!” The murmurs of agreement feel like weights attaching themselves to Rey’s limbs, dragging her lower and lower. Her throat won’t work, closing in panic. This can’t be happening. Plutt’s a cruel bastard, but he’s also the only kind of guardian that she’s ever known, surely he doesn’t— surely he wouldn’t—

“Take her,” Plutt shouts over the crowd, pointing a condemning finger. “Perhaps it’ll appease him— and if it’s all nonsense, then she’ll be back soon enough!”

 

* * *

 

Rey tries to fight them off. She really does.

But there’s six young men and just one of her, and they’re all farmers and hunters and one is even a blacksmith. They manage to get her tied and gagged and they take turns carrying her as they walk through the fields, towards Wicker’s Wood. The place itself isn’t so frightening to her any more, but she doesn’t have her bow and arrow or her water, and it’s nearly dark outside. She squirms and kicks but it’s no use. All she manages to do is mess up some of her braids, wisps of hair coming loose around the crown of her head.

A bird caws in the distance as they walk. The closer they get to the wall of trees, the more tense the boys become. When they finally reach the edge of the forest, one of them stops and clears his throat. “You know,” he says, lightly as if to dispel the fear in the air, “we don’t have to send her in right away. I mean, if she’s going to die anyway, we might as well have a little fun.”

Rey’s heart stutters.

There’s another chuckle from somewhere behind her, and a hand slides up her calf. She kicks again, snapping out her foot, snarling at them through her gag.

“Ah, come on, don’t be like that.”

More laughter as Rey is dumped on the ground, knocking the air from her lungs. There are hands pushing up her skirts now, and she can’t see what’s happening because there another one in her hair, holding her head so that she’s staring at the darkening sky. My knife, she thinks, twisting the arms behind her back and bending up her legs even though it leaves her more exposed. She needs to get to the knife in her boot.

She’s distracted when someone removes her gag, tracing her cheek. Rey immediately snaps her face around to clamp her teeth down on his fingers, determined to draw blood.

“Ow! The bitch  _bit_  me—”

She’s so close to that blade. Panic is bubbling in her chest, but so is determination. If she can just reach it, she can fight them off, she’s small but she’s tough and strong and she can take these idiots—

“Let her go.”

It’s softly said, but everyone freezes. Even Rey pauses, her neck twisting around to look.  _Ben?_   

He’s standing just on the edge of the clearing, half-shrouded in the darkness cast by the trees. It accentuates the deep grooves of his face and the scar that arcs down his cheek, making him look much older and more threatening than Rey is used to.

One of the boys behind Rey recovers first. “Who the hell are you?”

Ben steps out from the trees into the clearing, and in a strange moment of hyper-awareness brought on by her pounding adrenaline, Rey looks down and sees that… That…  

There are no shadows around Ben’s feet _._

That’s not possible. Rey’s eyes dart around to confirm that the rest of the world still casts a shadow, that  _she_  casts a shadow from the setting sun, just as she should. But there is nothing tethering Ben to the ground. She stares, wide eyed, all of the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.  _Where’s his shadow?_

The young men haven’t noticed. They’re rallying, recovering from the unexpected appearance of this stranger. The biggest of them, a bully called Johann who used to dangle food in front of her as a child and laugh when she cried from hunger, steps forward and spits at Ben. “Get out of here,  _schwein_. Come back later. You can have a go when we’re done.”

It all happens within the blink of an eye. One moment Johann is standing there proudly, knife in hand, and in the next all that Rey can see is that… Something… Is sticking out of his back. No. It’s sticking  _through_  his chest, pulsing and slick with blood, multiple curved blades that are black and sharp and shaped like fingers, but no human has fingers like that. They move and Johann makes a terrible gurgling noise, the grating sound of metal against his spine making Rey want to heave.

Because the blades are attached to an arm and the arm is attached to  _Ben_ , Ben who smiles at her jokes and once grabbed her and lifted her like she was nothing to stop her from falling, Ben who shared some of his bread and water when she was hungry,  _her Ben_ —

The blades withdraw with a crunching and slick noise and Johann crumples to the ground.

It’s just a human hand on the end Ben’s arm now. But it’s slickened with blood, horrible gelatinous clumps of tissue and viscera clinging to his skin. “Let her go,” he says again, taking another step towards them, lips twisting into a sneer that show his teeth. 

The boys skitter backwards, shoving Rey towards him, nearly tripping over their own feet. Rey hears a few of them breathe out choked noises that sound like ‘he’s real’ before one of them— Mikkel, the butcher’s son— manages “please, she is, she is a sacrifice from Jachenau, please take her and leave our livestock.”

Ben— no,  _Kylo Ren_ — crouches down in front of Rey and she stares up at him, frozen, unable to make a sound even if she wanted to. When he reaches out, his hands are gentle, and he cradles her into his arms. He lifts her easily and tucks her into his chest before he turns back to the boys. “Tell your village I am not satisfied.”

“What? But—” Mikkel stutters when Ben turns to look at him directly. “I mean, I understand, yes, we’ll bring another girl—”

“I don’t want a woman.”

Rey could laugh at the confused faces of the boys if she wasn’t so baffled and afraid herself. What could he mean? None of this makes sense. Ben shifts and holds her even tighter, and Rey becomes aware that his blood-soaked hand is near her shoulder; she can smell it, smell the metallic and sharp iron tang of Johann’s  _heart_. She feels her stomach lurch, her throat working to keep the contents of her meagre dinner down. She’s so distracted that she nearly misses what Ben says.

“Unkar Plutt. Bring me Unkar Plutt, and your village may survive me.”  

 

 


End file.
